Aditi Sen, historian and professor at Queen’s University, Canada, absolutely loves cake. She loves Hindi cinema equally and almost always watches a film more than once. So, in 2015, she combined both passions and started a rather quirky Tumblr page called ‘Kaho Na Cake Hai’. From the oddest cakes like the one in Dial 100 to pancakes disguised as cakes, and a lot more, her page is a treasure trove of cakes that have been used in a range of Hindi films.

In a conversation with Outlook’s Daniya Rahman, Sen talks about her Tumblr page and how, while cakes may be used as decorative elements sometimes, more often than not, a lot of thought goes into cakes that make the cut. Here are edited excerpts.

What made you start a Tumblr page dedicated to cakes from Bollywood films?

I love cakes and I like to watch films closely. I enjoy looking at details; so I started the Tumblr page to post screenshots of cakes from Hindi films. It soon became a repository, not only for me but for many others who found the idea interesting, and started sharing information about cakes they had noticed in various films.

Having said that, I was also interested in looking at how cakes in films are reflective of changing times. I remember, in the 80s and the 90s, when birthday parties were fairly simple; the cake would be the highlight and there’d be chips and samosa. If someone was very rich, they’d have Rasna as an addition. But now, birthday parties have become very elaborate. And if you look at the cakes in Bollywood films closely, you’ll see this transition there as well.

Tell us about some films where cakes have played a crucial role.

Some cakes are more important than others. In Namak Halaal, for instance, the cake is an important element of the film’s plot: it’s a poisoned cake. A dog eats it and dies. The cake becomes a medium for creating a misunderstanding between mother and son, which is the main theme of the film.

Some cakes are interesting owing to their shape or the messages inscribed on them. There’s a film called Arjun Pandit with Sunny Deol and Juhi Chawla in the lead. That’s probably the only cake I’ve seen that has wishes written in Hindi: ‘Janamdin ki Shubhkamnayein.’ Or the cake in Ramesh Sippy’s Akayla. It’s a train-shaped cake and the frosting is done with a very childish hand, with no finesse.

But what interested me more was the economic backdrop behind a cake, the setup of the party and whether there was any religious symbolism in the cakes used on set.

In many old films, to show that someone is very rich, a lavish party setup with a huge cake would be shown, the cake being symbolic of the character’s economic affluence. A character who’s poor would get kheer or halwa or sometimes not even that.

There are also some films where cakes are symbolic of the trauma of separation. In Nikaah, for instance, there’s a cake in the climactic scene of the film, when Salma Agha’s character reaches a breaking point and questions the two men, played by Raj Babbar and Deepak Parashar, for treating her like an object passed between them as they please. It’s a powerful scene: Raj and Deepak are standing on either side of the frame with Salma’s character in the middle and the cake in the background.

Chalte Chalte with Rani Mukerjee and Shahrukh Khan has cake symbolism as well. They are forced to cut an anniversary cake when their marriage is falling apart and that tension is very well done around the cake.

Talking about showing separation through symbolism in cake, there’s also a film called Sindoor, directed by K Ravi Shankar and starring Shashi Kapoor and Jaya Prada. Their marriage is falling apart and they are made to? cut a house-shaped cake in half. Rishi Kapoor’s character is the one who’s caused the rift and he is standing in the middle in that shot. This shows that there’s thought behind these cakes.

Could you elaborate on exploring the economic backdrop and material culture through cakes?

I remember my childhood days in Calcutta. There were few bakeries and they were very expensive. But when Monginis came to the city, things changed. In fact, you’ll find a lot of Monginis cakes in films around the time. In Naamcheen that released in 1991, Aditya Pancholi’s character promises a kid that he’s going to celebrate her birthday. But before he can make it to the birthday party, he is arrested. So he asks the jailor to buy a cake and it’s a Monginis cake. He then twists a steel plate in the shape of a piping bag, cuts himself and fails to write on the cake, so writes on the wall with his blood. He doesn’t even eat the cake!

Very often, cakes that are connected to tragedy—say, there’s a cake but the celebration doesn’t happen because somebody gets arrested or dies—are not designed to be edible. Only when they have to eat the cake would they (the producers) bring in a real one. In this sense, Manmohan Desai, I feel, really liked cake. He would make sure that the cakes in his films are eaten. These are the dynamics of material culture that I try to explore. Food history is, in fact, one of my major research areas. So, I’m very interested in what qualifies as the ideal food for a given situation.

Your recent research has been on the depictions of horror in South Asian cinema and popular culture. Have you found any interesting cakes in horror films?

Oh, for sure. There’s a scene in this recent Hindi film called Rokkk with Sachin Khedekar and Tanushree Dutta where a ghost, who is a jealous ex-wife, leaves her handprints on a cake to ruin the man’s current marriage. Then there is Phir Wahi Raat with Rajesh Khanna, Kim and Danny Denzongpa. It’s a good suspense film. Somebody in the film pretends to be a ghost, comes to Kim’s character’s birthday party and spills blood on the cake.

Sometimes, the cake is not thematically associated with the film but is just a prop. Such as in Purana Mandir, by the Ramsay brothers who often had cakes in their productions.

I recently attended my friend’s daughter’s birthday party and they had caterers. To me that’s baffling. I was instantly reminded of this one birthday party I had had as a kid. My father got the usual chips and samosas but because he had some extra money that year, he got us a fancy cake. And it was very exciting for all of us. I remember my mother telling everyone that the cake had come from this fancy bakery. It was symbolic of our status. More recently, I came across the cake in Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui. It’s a designer cake with a kettle bell on it and you can see the evolution of cake design in Hindi films from the 80s and90s.. That this kind of shift in dynamics can get conveyed through food is what interests me the most.

If you had to choose one cake from the many that you have found in Hindi films, which one would it be?

The cake in Dial 100 is one of my most favorite. The way the whole scene plays out and the white sheet removed to unveil a corpse cake is remarkable. That cake was made out of plaster of paris. Often, cakes were made of plaster of paris because those were not the days of advanced technology in India. So, it’s also indicative of how Indian baking has evolved since then.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Let Them Eat Cake")